


Convergence

by the-reylo-void (Anysia)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Tumblr: reylofanfictionanthology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 17:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9133303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anysia/pseuds/the-reylo-void
Summary: Whatever the next steps are, I want to take them with you.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elywyngirlie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elywyngirlie/gifts).



> This is kind of a hybrid response to the requested prompts of "fluff/cuddles" and "first date". I tried to take a realistic canon look at how Rey and Kylo might end up at that point, so there's a little angst, for flavor, but hopefully the fluff is at sufficient levels. I hope you like it, Elywyngirlie! :)

When Kylo Ren finally comes home, it is in chains aboard a battered Resistance freighter, blasters trained on him from every angle.

 

Rey frowns, raises an eyebrow at the nearest officer. “Is this really necessary?” She holds up Kylo’s lightsaber, given to her freely.

 

“It is.” It is Kylo who speaks. He has not looked at her or spoken to her since the bloody showdown in Snoke’s chamber, when his master had moved to strike Rey down and Kylo had run his saber through his chest instead.

 

Rey stares at him. His shoulders are hunched, hair falling over his face. He has the exhausted pallor of those she had seen near death on Jakku, starved and wasted.

 

“The Light,” Luke murmurs beside her. “It’s overwhelming him. It’s been so long.”

 

“Will he be all right?” Rey feels the familiar build of compassion in her chest. Her mind is blissfully quiet – he’s shut her out, their Force Bond dimmed even as tendrils of grief, confusion, anger slip through the cracks.

 

“I don’t know,” Luke says. “But you’ve already brought him home once. We have hope.”

 

“I didn’t bring him home.”

 

Luke smiles to himself a little. “He couldn’t escape from Snoke for me, for Han, for Leia,” he says, very quietly. “But he did it for you.”

 

Kylo raises his head, and his eyes meet Rey’s. They’re dark, tired, pleading.

 

 _I don’t know what you want, Kylo,_ she thinks, and it’s an exhausted refrain she’s fired at him so many times.

 

He closes his eyes, rests his head back against the bulkhead.

 

The same answer, usually spat at her with angry precision, knife-edged, now soft:

 

_You._

 

———

 

He doesn’t sleep well.

 

Rey can feel it as she curls up in her own bunk, his exhaustion, his mental turmoil. They’re on Yavin 4, in stasis as commanders come and go, discuss his fate, the next steps.

 

Kylo is not confined to a cell – rather he is fitted with a monitoring device, injected into his bicep, and given a thousand-meter radius around a small complex near the jungle’s edge.

 

He is not granted visitors, but Rey knows that Luke seeks him out regardless. Kylo’s grief and guilt spike through the bond when he does.

 

Rey tries to talk to him, but still he shuts her out more often than not. He will not discuss what happened on Mustafar, when he had struck down his master.

 

After a week, she sneaks past the perimeter of his prisoner’s complex, finds him sitting cross-legged by the edge of the river, bathed in moonlight.

 

“I knew you’d come.” He doesn’t turn to look at her, his hands braced along his knees.

 

Rey sighs, sits next to him. “How did you know anything? You won’t talk to me.”

 

He smiles, just a little, and it’s strange to see him here, still dressed in black, dark eyes and dark hair and dark smirks, but bathed in silver moonlight, stubborn Light radiating through him.

 

“I know you, Rey,” he murmurs. “I know you.”

 

She meets his eyes, and she has long since stopped pretending not to understand what she sees within them.

 

“Why did you do it?” she asks. Her hand finds his, clasps. They’ve done this before, on the battlefield, in the darkness through their bond, but it’s different now. Real. Warm. _Here_.

 

Kylo does not look away. “I killed for him,” he says, very quietly. “So many times. So many people. It didn’t even matter anymore.”

 

He leans forward, rests his forehead against hers, and she sighs.

 

“Until it was you,” he murmurs. “Until he tried to take you.”

 

Rey moves first, lets herself slide her hands into his hair and pull him into her kiss, and his arms come tight around her.

 

It’s a chaste thing, heavy with grief and exhaustion, but they lean into each other, comforting. She strokes his hair. He rubs comforting circles into her back.

 

“Rey,” he murmurs against her lips, kisses her cheek, her jaw, her temple.

 

“I’m here,” she responds, presses her cheek to his, and here, in the soft moonlight, just for now, she can allow herself to love him, this broken, beaten man whose heart beats beside hers.

 

———

 

It becomes a regular occurrence.

 

It’s an easy thing, the Jedi mind trick. She doesn’t encounter many guards, but when she does, their minds are easily, gently suggested elsewhere, and they don’t remember her.

 

(If Luke knows, as he doubtless does, he says nothing.)

 

Rey and Kylo meditate together, sitting side-by-side, cross-legged, allowing the Force to flow through them. The Light is still terrifying, and Kylo chokes on it sometimes, overwhelmed, frightened.

 

He holds Rey’s hand, lets him draw her in, and together they find balance.

 

Sometimes his fingers skim her wrist, a light touch, yearning, and he looks to her with eyes gone dark.

 

Rey is unsurprised, somehow, when the kisses resume. Kylo kisses her like a drowning man, clings close like a broken child, and she feels devotion scream through him.

 

The first night she spends in his bed, she holds him close, delirious with pleasure, strokes his bare shoulders and breathes with him.

 

“I hate living in the shadows like this,” he says one night as they curl up together on his narrow pallet, Rey’s head on his chest, his thumb rubbing between her shoulderblades.

 

“You chose your path, Kylo,” Rey murmurs, kisses his sternum. It frightens her a little, how easy the move feels, how natural, and she still wonders at their being here, like this. “It’ll take time for you to right it.”

 

“I never wanted before,” he says. He moves his hand to stroke her hair, the fall of it. “I lusted, I _coveted_. But I never… wanted something like this. I want to be able to walk with you in the light. I want to be able to stand by your side. I want…” He falls silent, but the words echo through her mind, through the bond.

 

_I want to be yours, and for you to be mine._

Rey leans up on one elbow, gives him a soft smile before brushing a kiss across his brow. “We are,” she says, very quietly.

 

When she kisses him, the thread of light beneath his skin burns brighter.

 

———

 

It takes time.

 

A year of Resistance negotiations, painful recounting of crimes, tearful apologies, screaming grief.

 

A year of battles, the remnants of the First Order swept out of the galaxy, left to burn.

 

A year of meditation, of gentle touches, of tears and kisses, of comforting embraces and slow breathing.

 

Finally, they stand side-by-side at the edge of his restricted compound, staring out to the river. The guards have long since stopped pretending to know why she comes, who she is to the prisoner ( _former_ prisoner, now, clemency hard-won, hard-fought by the mother who still cannot bring herself to see him).

 

“…it doesn’t feel real,” Kylo murmurs. Rey reaches for his hand, and he squeezes it tight. “Being free. No… Snoke, no Jedi training, no imprisonment, nothing.”

 

“Frightening, is it?” Rey crooks a smile at him. “You can go anywhere. Well,” she amends, “anywhere outside the Resistance’s jurisdiction. But there are still countless neutral systems. Whatever you want, you can do.”

 

Kylo doesn’t speak, but she hears his wistful sigh through the Bond.

 

_I want you by my side. I want a quiet place somewhere, the two of us, no expectations or apologies._

Rey rolls her eyes, smile widening just a fraction. _A whole galaxy of possibilities and you want to go on a **date** with me? _

_…you make it sound so impossible._ Kylo returns her smile, mouths a kiss at her temple. _I want you, a nice meal somewhere, a bottle of Corellian brandy, and the road ahead of us._

Rey allows him to thread an arm around her shoulders, slips her own around his waist and leans into him.

 

The sun is rising ahead of them, red and gold, promise and hope dawning as they stand together.

 

Kylo sighs, presses his cheek to her temple.

 

 _I love you,_ he murmurs.

 

Rey closes her eyes, pushes him back gently so she can cup his cheek, bring his lips to hers.

 

The bond between them is warm, and the Light burns, pulses, shines.

 

 _I know,_ she whispers.


End file.
